Parting
by Andi Horton
Summary: Too many times to count, Lucy has thought they were parting for the last time. Now, as Susan sends her on through the woods alone, she finally sees the truth. Yes, sorry, it's movie based; last time, I promise!


Parting

O0O0O0O

Destrier takes to the woods like a thundering black demon, his nostrils flaring red. The young Queen who guides his head clings like a burr to his neck, her shoulders aching with the sheer strain of staying on; but then, Susan was always a better rider than she ever cared to have occasion to prove. At Susan's back rides Lucy, the girl's arms wrapped around her sister, her breath jolted from her lungs with each powerful, pounding stride the animal takes. They have ridden for their lives before, though never in this lifetime; the experience, they find, has lost none of its terror.

Destrier covers the ground at a dizzying speed, and Susan crouches low over his neck to avoid being buffeted by the wind. In the back of her head, of course, Susan knows that they are not going as fast as she has before. They are slower than cars and trains and not nearly as fast as an aeroplane, and yet here, now, it seems they must be flying. With the silent, sleeping trees rooted around them, the hills and gullies more treacherous than either Queen had previously remembered them, Destrier stumbling up and over the steepest bits and skidding perilously down the slopes, his sides heaving beneath their knees, they somehow seem to be travelling faster than either girl can remember having ever done before in her life.

Lucy's heart is in her throat, her arms around Susan's waist, her little legs still struggling to remember what it means to seat a horse. Susan does not seem to have the same problem, and though her breathing is ragged, her grip on the reins is sure. Is she, Lucy wonders, remembering her own horse? Is she remembering every time they flew through the woods as if pursued by the hounds of hell, their shrieks of exhilaration ringing through the greenwood, the tree roots rippling back to clear a path for their Queens as they rode?

"_Lucy, watch out for that—"_

_But it was gone before she could finish the sentence, the root graciously retracted as the Queens' horses thundered along the narrow forest trail, the mighty, ancient Oak swaying in a gentle bow at their passing. Lucy blew it a kiss._

_Susan, of course, had pretended horror at such familiarity, but Lucy, laughing, had spared breath enough to look over her shoulder and cry "what, Susan, really! He's old enough to be my great-great grandfather!" And then Susan, laughing at her little sister's bravado, had leaned forward in the saddle, crying encouragement to her willing mare until they overtook Lucy and won the race to the river mouth._

_They'd had the very best of days; they had lived the very best of lives._

There will be no shrieks today. All breath is spent on the chase, all desperation devoted to evasion. All their focus is on the roots that no longer bow in abeyance to the monarchs, but rather lifelessly snarl the forest floor before them. One hoof placed wrong amidst these unyielding things and Destrier's leg will snap, spelling the end for all of them.

"They've seen us!"

So they have. Closer they come, the soldiers; they thunder along the trail above, seeking the clearest way down, and the rhythmic echo of collective pursuit echoes through the wood around the fleeing girls. They are too close. Susan knows it; she didn't need Lucy to tell her so. She feels the vibration of the hoof beats in her chest and knows by the way the sound travels that they will soon be within easy range.

Shooting range.

"_No, Lucy, you must bring it up closer to your mouth, you see? If you lower it that way you'll only shoot your adversary in the foot, and that's not what we're trying to do."_

"_Well, it might at least slow him down a little, mightn't it?"_

"_It might, but please, dear, just try to listen, won't you? Bring it up . . ." Susan's touch was soft on the younger Queen's arm, raising her hand to the corner of her mouth. "There, that's exactly it. Now if you loose the arrow, you'll strike him directly in the chest. Of course, if the soldier is wearing armour you must adjust to aim for a join between the breastplate and the— no, no, here. Look. Steady, Lucy. That's the way."_

"_I must say," Lucy had muttered, sighting along the length of her arrow and trying to imagine that the bale of hay opposite was a charging warrior, "I can't believe it of you, somehow, Susan . . . that you, of all people, would prefer to shoot a man in the chest rather than the leg."_

_Susan was silent a very long moment, watching her little sister wrestle with the bow. When at last she made her reply, Lucy had to strain to hear._

"_I do hate to see them fall," she murmured. "It makes me sick inside . . . they're only doing what they must, after all, the same as our own soldiers. But if I am to shoot with the archers, then I am a soldier too. And so . . . I do what I must."_

"_But how?" Lucy, eyes guileless and wide with wonder, lowered her bow and turned to face her sister. "That is, I know you must, but I don't understand how you can do something that's so unlike you."_

"_I do it," Susan said, "for the sake of those who need me to. I do it," she looked at her little sister with such fierce and protective devotion that it startled Lucy to see, "for the people I love." Then she looked down and to the side, embarrassment overtaking her. "I'm afraid it's . . . the only way I can."_

Now, her heels drumming the horse's sides, her knuckles bleaching white as she maintains a merciless control over the reins, Susan remembers this. She knows the soldiers will be on them soon, and she knows, as she knew each and every time she took aim at a man's heart and loosed an arrow to end a life, why she must do what she is going to do.

Destrier is a stallion bred and trained for battle, a powerful animal with every mood and strength and speed to which his kind are entitled, and yet the sting of authority cuts his mouth as Susan the Gentle saws ruthlessly on the reins, grinding the thin bit into his cheeks. It pains her to hurt him, and yet even as her heart aches for the horse and the discomfort she is causing him, she knows that for her sister, for her brothers, for their kingdom, she would do infinitely worse; has done infinitely worse. Destrier stumbles to a startled, prancing halt, for he is a horse trained well enough to recognise a rider who will brook no refusal.

Susan, for her part, swings down from her seat, and Lucy, stunned, shaken by her sudden solitude atop the charger, can only stare at the older Queen as the supple leather lines are pressed into her own small palm.

"Take the reins." The command is steady, although inside Susan is shaking all over.

Lucy stares, choosing, for the moment, to remain uncomprehending. "What are you doing?!" She can't mean . . .

"I'm sorry Lucy." The years she has lost are in Susan's eyes now as she looks at her younger sister. For just a moment it is a lifetime before, and she is a Queen, deciding for all. "But it looks as if you'll be going alone after all."

So she does mean it. And when Lucy sees that, when she sees that Susan means for her to go on alone, she wonders why it should even shock her. Always, Susan has done this. Ever and always, although Lucy is the first to rush in, Susan is the last to leave. Susan has always covered her retreat.

_First in every desperate charge, last in every desperate retreat._

_Lucy had once asked Corin what King Lune had meant by carving such grim words into the arch above the door to his own castle. Susan, with them, had been the one to answer._

"_He means to remember it always, I should think," she said softly. "I expect he means to never forget how very much he belongs to his kingdom. I expect he means for his kingdom to never forget how much he belongs to them."_

_Then her hand had found Lucy's and squeezed it with possessive fervour, and Lucy all at once felt safe and warm and loved to know that she and Susan and Edmund and Peter belonged as much to each other as they did to their kingdom._

A normally gentle palm now lays a stinging slap on Destrier's rump; Susan does not delude herself that the blow, in and of itself, is enough to make the animal bolt, but if his training will out . . . and so it does. Obedient to his understanding of Susan's meaning, Destrier is off again and Lucy finds herself forced to all-too-rapidly recover her memories of what it means to really _ride_. This is no schooling pony, no tired old nag who leads around screaming children at the seaside on their holiday weekends. For the first time following a never-forgotten lifetime, the little Queen of Narnia seats a horse who is fit for battle— or for fleeing it.

By the time they top the nearest ridge her muscles have recalled themselves and her distant years of training and practice have come rushing back to her, borne along on the strength of sheer necessity. Lucy's knees and hands work in tandem once more and she finds she has sufficient control over Destrier's head to rein him in, even to draw him to a halt. Then, turning in the saddle, Lucy looks at Susan, and Susan, standing in a clearing whose momentary tranquility is matched only by the expression on her face, looks back at her sister.

_Is it the last time?_ Lucy wonders. _Is this the last time I'll see you?_

There have been so many last times, she has nearly lost count.

_Their father, dashing in his Army uniform, twirled them around the parlour and promised to write them every day but he had not been able to allay the fear in their mother's eyes. As they gathered at the station to see him off, Lucy had wrapped her little arms around Daddy's neck and begged him to stay. He had put her off gently, passing her to Mum, promising to return, and yet . . . as he boarded the train, the thought had crowded Lucy's head, sweeping aside all else as she strained to keep him in sight for as long as she could._

_Is this the last time?_

_Their mother, pale and wan, had sat them all down one evening after dinner and announced that the children must be evacuated to the country to escape the bombs. The very real panic that followed had filled the little kitchen, each of the children feeding on their collective fear that nobody would want to take in a whole family of four._

"_I won't leave, I won't, I won't," Lucy had sobbed, clinging to her sister. "What if we never see each other again?"_

_Is this the last time?_

_Aslan, his heavy head hanging with the weight of what he knew he must do, had stirred the young Queens to urgency. Susan had been tense and breathless and frightened at her side; Lucy herself had been all a-quiver with the panic that smothered her little heart._

_That invitation to walk with him had been the sweetest thing she had yet heard; his insistence at going on without them, the very worst. As the sisters had crept to find a vantage point, that same, gnawing fear had choked the child's chest as she watched her King prepare to die._

_Is this the last time?_

_A galleon, graceful in line and mighty under the weight of full sail, had set out from the harbour of Cair Paravel, bound for Calormen. Susan stood waving on the deck as Edmund stood gravely at her side, and Lucy had watched with tears in her eyes and her heart in her throat._

_Is this the last time?_

_They had ridden so merrily that day, bent on nothing more taxing than sport, hoping for nothing more glorious than a chance to catch the Stag, beg wishes of it and then talk of the chase over their meal that night. They had walked so blindly into the woods, fallen out of the wardrobe in such disarray, such sickening confusion. Lucy had looked over her shoulder in blind panic, hoping against all hope to see the way back home . . . but Narnia had been lost to them._

_Is this the last time?_

It never was.

Lucy, seating Destrier, feeling him prance and paw and fight the urge to ignore her touch on the reins, remembers with sweet, blinding clarity how the last time never was.

Daddy had come home in the end. The Professor had readily agreed to host them all. The Lion had risen with a crack like thunder, a sunrise of blazing glory and a roar that promised victory forevermore. Her sister had been delivered from the land of the treacherous Prince, and now Narnia, at last, for however brief a space of time, is given unto them again.

Susan stands in the clearing, looking up at Lucy. The Gentle Queen is ready to shoot to kill, to deny her very nature to save her family. As she has been too many times before, Susan is prepared to die to spare her sister's life. Lucy, from where she sits, can see the clouds of dust raised by the horses of the approaching soldiers. She now knows even better than Susan how close the enemy has come; how real the danger is. It could all too very easily be the last time . . . and yet, through grace alone, it never is.

Susan is waiting for her to flee, Lucy is longing to stay. _Let me fight with you_, she wants to plead. _Let me do what I can to save us both_.

But Susan would refuse.

So Lucy at last breaks their gaze, turns all her focus to the horse beneath her and gives him his head. She shouts him onward, drumming her heels against his ribcage in a manner she knows is mostly ineffective; her little heels must feel like butterflies on his sides. Yet even so he understands her desire and plunges forward all the same, the girl-queen doing all she can to simply stay mounted. The leaves on the forest floor are tossed up in cyclones all around them and Susan is soon left far behind, a world apart and far away.

It is Lucy's part, now, to go further up; further in. It is her part to seek the Lion, to wrap her arms around that rich and golden mane, to beg his help for the land and family she loves. As for seeing Susan once more . . . Lucy, her breath coming in short, painful bursts, her hands growing weak from clinging so tightly to the reins, still cannot help but take comfort in knowing that it is not, after all, the last time. It never is.

She will see her sister again.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** This is the second of two one-shots I decided to write after seeing the new movie. The first, _The Way of Kings_, was based on a scene that prompted me to attempt to reconcile at least some of what we're supposed to know about the characters with how degraded they had become from their former selves. The second —this one— sprang from something infinitely more pleasant: a desire to explore a moment I really did think was well orchestrated, and beautifully acted to boot. Granted, it may also have helped to inspire me that I went to watch the movie with _my_ sister, who was in more than a little pain at the time. Lastly, if in the reading of this you caught even a glimpse of book-things to come . . . well then so much the better.

I still don't see much of CS Lewis's own creation in the new film; I personally have no room for a Narnia where Aslan is an afterthought. There were a few lovely moments to combat the bad ones, though, and now that I have indulged myself in exploring one of each, I will return to book-based fun. That is, at least until the next film puts in an appearance!


End file.
